Touch
by Emma Arthur
Summary: John fights through his grief for Pulse, and remembers what it was like to feel.


[mentions/non-graphic description of PTSD, IED injuries, depression, somewhat unhealthy relationships, insomnia, light self-harm]

This is the first of a series around how John's mutation affects his senses and his life, with each story centered around one sense. Some will be more light-hearted−this one isn't. Fair warning.

* * *

Standing over the grave of his best friend, John lets his memories swirl and blend until they're a mashup of impressions and sensations. Gus falling, shot in the back, just yards away and Marcos pulling John out−the one John has replayed over and over in his head the last few weeks, trying to see what he missed, where he went wrong. Gus looking up at him and squeezing his hand, hard, as the life left his eyes. Gus in a Sentinel Services vest, with no recognition on his face. Gus with his eyes lit up with power and joy, just rescued from detention, kissing him for the first time in a year...

And now Gus is gone for good and all John can feel is numb.

He's tired. It's been a long day. A long week. A long… John doesn't quite remember when was the last time he took a moment to rest without another crisis interrupting him. Was it before Lorna was arrested? He's not sure he's truly rested since leaving Gus in that relocation center.

Two years. An eternity. What did his friend endure in all that time?

John has seen enough in his life to know most of the forms of torture used by government agencies. He can imagine what his friend went through better than most−and that's exactly why he'd convinced himself that Gus had died there, by the broken fence of the relocation center. Because it was so much easier than thinking about the alternative.

John comes out of his reverie when Reed kneels beside him to place a picture on his father's grave.

The graves don't have markers. They won't. Gus and Otto Strucker aren't the first people they've buried here at the edge of the forest, but a real graveyard would be too dangerous to have. All evidence of the graves will fade with the next few rains, and soon they will be the only ones to know who rests here.

Reed stands back up and turns to John.

"Thank you," he says. "For bringing him back, for...you know, digging the grave."

John acknowledges his thanks with an inclination of his head. Despite all their differences, today they've reached an understanding through shared pain.

"Go back to your family," he says.

Reed nods, watching him for a little longer before walking away, with one last look at the two fresh graves.

John lets himself collapse once Reed is out of sight, sitting down on the floor and crossing his arms around his knees. His fingernails dig into his arms, but he doesn't feel the pain. His skin is back to feeling like stone. He's aching all over, from being thrown around by the Sentinel mutant, from the blast at the antique shop and digging the two graves, but he's too numb to care.

 _The Mutant Marine Special Operation Team started out as a mismatched group of fifteen mutant soldiers. All the Marine Raiders training in the world didn't prepare them for actively using their abilities in the field, and most of them could barely control their mutation._

 _John quickly got them into the habit of training together during their time off. He needed to assess how well they could work with each other and which powers would be useful in combat. He'd watched Scott and Jean do this countless times at the school, coax their abilities out of unsure mutants and figure out how to integrate them into the team._

 _The day shy, enthusiastic Augustus Milligan−code name Pulse−finds out the full extent of his powers, they all find out along with him. Neophyte runs head first into a wall instead of phasing through, Colossus loses his armored form to revert back to flesh, and John himself suddenly feels weak and nauseous, as his very cells lose their density. Even though Pulse only manages to hold it for a few seconds, the headache from his senses shrinking brutally doesn't leave John for hours._

" _What the hell was that?" he gasps through his body turning heavier again. The sensation is deeply unsettling._

" _I guess mutant powers are a system too," Pulse answers with a smirk._

" _Holy shit," John mutters. "Well, Milligan, you are full of surprises, aren't you?"_

John sits there, at the foot of his best friends grave, for a long time. He doesn't feel the cold of the night settle around him, and he's too lost in his thoughts to notice the quieting of the activity inside the bank as everyone goes to sleep. The memories are bittersweet−or sometimes just bitter. Here in the dark, at the edge of the forest, John feels free to let the tears run down his cheeks thinking of Gus.

All traces of Gus are long gone from the bank. John remembers stumbling over images of his friend with every other step, at first, after he watched him go down. Gus was such an integral part of this station, of the Underground, even though he was with them less than a year.

"I miss you," John murmurs into the wind. "I'm so sorry I didn't come back for you."

This just triggers another wave of gut-wrenching guilt, and John punches the ground beside him, hard. It's soft enough that his fist sinks in the dirt. John keeps punching. It might be seeing Gus today, seeing him die, but the loss and the guilt are as sharp as the first day.

As sharp as everything around him feels dull.

 _Along with training Pulse to gain control over this new ability, John decides they all need to learn how to function with it, in case Pulse needs to use it out in the field. John himself especially. He is the only one on the team with a permanent physical mutation that's more than aesthetic, and thus the most vulnerable to Pulse's power._

" _Are you sure?" Pulse asks when John orders him to use his power on him. "I can tell it's painful to you."_

" _We're not here to coddle each other, Milligan," John tells him sternly._

" _Yes, sir," Pulse says, standing to attention._

 _This time, John carefully observes the way Pulse's eyes glow when he activates his power, the near immediate response from his own body. It feels like melting, almost. His hearing suddenly shrinks, along with the always present buzz of sensations coming from his tracking ability, and his head explodes in pain. John winces, forbidding himself from swaying._

 _Experimentally, he touches his face with his hand. He expected, more or less, the strange softness of his skin, but not the explosion of new sensations. Everything he feels is sharp, suddenly, like layers of clothes have been removed from his skin and he can properly touch for the first time. His clothes itch against his body, his feet are too warm in the combat boots, his fingers can feel the evening stubble on his cheeks. It's as wonderful as it's disturbing._

 _The sensation leaves as fast as it came when Pulse loses his control. John gasps as the density returns to his body, making him feel, for the first time of his life, clumsy and heavy. As the smells, the sounds, the images from afar, past and future, return, his skin loses its sensitivity to become numb again._

" _You okay?" Pulse asks when he stands there for a moment too long._

 _John shakes himself. "Good job," he says. "Now you learn to hold it."_

 _He doesn't say that, despite the headache and the vague nausea, he already misses being able to_ feel.

The sky has started to lighten by the time John gets back inside. Everyone is still sleeping, or at least lying in bed, except for Marcos who is their lookout for the night. John can hear him pacing up in the tower, so he joins him.

"Anything new?" he asks, hoisting himself onto the parapet overlooking the bank's entrance.

"No," Marcos says. "Everything's quiet."

They stay silent, each lost in their thought, watching the sun start to rise.

"Something happened at Reed's father's," Marcos says after a while. "I saw him come back last night. And you didn't."

"Did he tell you anything?"

Marcos shakes his head. "Only that you needed a moment, and that he'd explain in the morning."

"His father died. Sentinel Services caught up with us there, and he sacrificed himself so we could get out."

"Damn. You couldn't do anything?"

John hangs his head. "Pulse was with them."

"John−"

"He's dead." John closes his eyes and chokes up. "We brought them both back."

"Shit," Marcos murmurs.

Before John can stand up to pace, restless energy replacing the lethargy he's been feeling since last night, Marcos comes up and hugs him tight. Tight enough that John can actually feel the pressure on his skin. He leans in almost involuntarily, getting his arms around his friend.

"I wish−" Marcos starts with a sad look when John pushes him back.

"Don't," John stops him. He doesn't want the bitter memories, or the guilt right now. He wants to get back on track.

Marcos nods. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Yeah," John says, not looking at him. "Always am."

 _Pulse is away, safe at home on permission, when everything goes to hell. John will be glad of it, later. They've become fast friends over the last year, though the base in the middle of the Afghan desert is not the proper place to explore their attraction for each other._

 _Pulse comes to see him in the hospital, once he's flown back home. John's mostly bulletproof skin is the only reason he survived the IED he led his team onto._

 _He's the only one who did._

 _He's got so much shrapnel embedded in his stone-like skin and muscles that the doctors end up leaving half of it in._

 _They mourn together for their fallen brothers, but Pulse doesn't understand, not really. He repeats that it's not John's fault they're gone, that he couldn't have known._

 _John doesn't even have the luxury of wondering why he's the one who survived. Not for the first time in his life, he curses his mutation with everything he has, and punches holes through the walls of his hospital room._

 _Pulse holds John's hand through weeks of painful physical therapy and appointments with doctors who don't know anything about mutants. Through a grueling ceremony and a medal he doesn't deserve and discharge papers._

 _When Pulse is deployed again, John is almost relieved. It means he can finally let go. He has nothing but a few clothes to his name and half a dozen pieces of metal in his back, no job and no prospect for the future, as a mutant in a society increasingly frightened of them. Xavier's school closed sometime during the months he spent overseas, and the X-Men have disappeared off the surface of the Earth. John has nothing to go back to, and nothing to look forward to. He spends his days in bed, wrecking his room every time he wakes from a nightmare, slowly losing touch with reality._

 _That's how Pulse finds him three months later, barricaded in his crappy apartment that looks like it's been hit by a hurricane, curled up on the broken bed and whimpering at the noise of the city around him. He's the one who cleans everything up and moves in to make sure John eats. He's the one who coaxes him back out in the open, even if the first times end up with John in a corner with his hands pressed over his ears and his eyes closed tightly. He's the one who gives John a reason to get up in the morning again._

 _He's the one beside whom John wakes up, on the day everything changes again. They stay in front of the TV all day, watching the panic and the explosions and the hate replay again and again. They hold on to each other and make love that night with the desperation of people whose future has just been ripped away from them._

 _They have no illusions about what is going to happen._

 _Five weeks later, John meets with a lawyer and sees one of his old classmates for the first time in years. When he comes home, Gus is gone._

Punching through concrete blocks with his bare hands is probably not one of John's better ideas, but it's not like any punching ball has ever resisted his strength. Even the concrete is seriously straining under his fists, and he can barely feel the pain.

He hadn't realized how much he misses _feeling_ things.

He's tried to crash in his bed for a delayed, shortened night, but there was too much noise around to sleep with the mutants waking up, too many things on his mind. He hasn't really slept since he first saw Pulse the day they rescued Lorna and Reed.

The large block of concrete gives in under his fists and splits in two. John goes to shift to another one, not wanting to injure himself on the sharp edges−his hands are already bleeding as it is−but he is stopped by a voice behind him.

"It doesn't seem like a very efficient way to fortify this place," Clarice says, coming up to his side.

John gives her a side look, and lays his hands on the block he was preparing to hit. He hasn't heard her approach, which should be worrying in itself. He doesn't know if it's his exhaustion showing or that Clarice is becoming one of the few people who can slip under his radar because he trusts her. He's not sure which option he'd like most.

"Yeah, that's not really the point," he answers.

"You just needed to hit something, and concrete blocks were the closest thing?" Clarice deadpans, and John can hear her curiosity under the sarcasm.

"Try the closest thing I'm unlikely to reduce to dust," John says. "Although I think this one must have had a manufacturing defect," he nods toward the now split block.

"You feel better now?"

John shrugs, unsure where she's going with this. It seems to him that it's none of her business, given how strained their relationship has been since she came back, yet she's here.

"You should get your hands looked at," she says.

John looks down at his bleeding knuckles.

"I've had worse," he says. "Beside, I'm sure Caitlin has other things to do."

"So what drove you to punching concrete blocks?" Clarice asks, hoisting herself up on an intact block. "Unless I shouldn't ask?"

"It's fine," John says, sitting beside her. He's not sure if it's true, but he doesn't have it in him to argue with her again.

"Something to do with that trip you took to Cincinnati?"

"Remember Pulse? You saw him," John says. He looks away, trying to hide the emotions even Pulse's name incur in him. He came here to get rid of those, not to pour his heart out.

"Your friend who messes with abilities?"

Clarice's tone is not unkind, but John still wants to retch. She doesn't know anything about Gus, she only knows him as the mutant working for Sentinel Services. She doesn't know what a great friend he was, a great person, one who would never turn his back on them unless something truly horrible had happened.

"He's dead," John says flatly. His nails are digging into his palms, but he doesn't feel it anymore than his bleeding hands. He doesn't feel anything much.

Only the Gus-shaped hole in his heart.

"John, I'm sorry," Clarice says. She tries to catch his eyes, but John doesn't think he can handle that right now. He squints against the sunlight instead, and he can pretend the wetness in his eyes come from his light sensitivity.

"It shouldn't−" he starts, only to choke up. "I thought he died two years ago. I thought I'd made my peace with that."

 _The first John hears of Pulse again is on a list of mutants they've pulled from a Mutant Affairs employee. The twelve mutants on the list are to be transferred to a relocation center a week later, and Augustus Milligan is among them._

 _John has been looking everywhere, in between setting up the network with Lorna, for nearly a year. He still doesn't understand how it happened, how Pulse just disappeared one day, his trail fading in the middle of a shady neighborhood amid signs of a struggle._

 _He's nearly given up when his hope sparks again. Making the case to Lorna and Marcos that the transport bus is worth hitting takes everything he has, but it's more than worth it to see Gus's face again after so long. It goes nearly without a hitch and it's their first victory in months, so they throw together an actual welcoming party for the newcomers._

 _Gus's eyes light up the moment they are alone, just enough to affect John. The effect of Gus's power are still just as disturbing and painful as they are amazing, but their bodies pressed together again is nothing short of wonderful._

 _John hasn't_ felt _anything in a year, and now he never wants to stop._

"Gus−Pulse−he wasn't just my best friend," John says after they've been silent for a while. He doesn't even know why he feels Clarice needs to know that, but he goes with his instinct.

"What do you mean?"

"We were...together. Up until he..."

"Oh my God," Clarice exclaims, and John holds his breath, suddenly afraid of her reaction. He doesn't know where she stands on this, after all. Being the victim of one oppression doesn't prevent you from carrying out another.

"I can't believe I didn't realize," she says. John relaxes minutely. "I mean, here I was pressing you into telling me if you had feelings for me, and you'd just found out he was alive… I'm so sorry."

"There was a lot going on. You had every right to be angry at me over the whole business with Sonya."

"So when you said it was complicated, you meant−"

"No, I've been with women too," John says. "As you know."

"Yes, a little too well, actually."

John bites his lower lip. "Is this where I apologize again?"

"You've already done that," Clarice smiles. "Multiple times. I think it's time I look past it, isn't it?"

John shakes his head. "I _am_ sorry, though. Listen, I won't deny that I feel this...whatever it is between us. But I can't be what you're looking for. Not right now."

Clarice's face falls.

"I understand," she says. "There's still Sonya, and...you're grieving."

John sighs. He doesn't know how to get across the turmoil of emotions that's inside him at the moment, but grief is a large part of it. His attraction for Clarice only makes him feel guilt, so much that it would be unhealthy to act on it.

He's not what he'd like to be for Sonya either, but their relationship has never been the kind that took anything for granted, for forever. _All we have is here and now._ Sonya understands that on the same level as he does. But Clarice deserves better, and right now John knows the only thing he can bring her is more pain.

"I'm sorry," he repeats.

 _Healing is a long process._

 _John does his best to do for Gus what Gus once did for him, and he holds him through the nightmares and the flashbacks and the tears. Gus heals, slowly, improving a little bit every day, and John heals with him._

 _As the situation for mutants everywhere gets worse, the Underground sticks together and takes in refugees, builds safe spaces, and hopes for a better future._

 _Pulse becomes an active member of their leading committee, pushing for raids on detention centers and leading many of their outings. They expand with time, new stations being built in most major cities. Each one feels like a small victory, though they haven't won the war._

 _Nearly every night, Gus lets his eyes glow just for John, and John sheds his constant control and his fear of hurting people to_ feel _, for a few moments, to_ love _like he never has before._

 _Those ten months feel like a respite from the war raging around them._

 _Healing is a long process._

 _Coming back from the relocation center, John can barely see anything but Gus falling to the ground for days. He walks through the bank like a ghost, sensing his lover everywhere around him, flinching with every step. Nothing Marcos and Lorna try to do to help seems to bring him back to the present._

 _It takes months before the traces of Gus fade down to the background enough that John can think about anything else. He's still leading the Underground, but in reality Marcos and Lorna and Sage are doing most of the work. He just can't bring himself to care._

 _But he claws his way back to the surface, slowly._

 _The first time John opens up about how much he misses Gus, it's to a new refugee he barely knows. She's a good listener, and she's going to leave soon anyway. She doesn't have the pitying look in her eyes that Lorna and Marcos get every time someone says Pulse's name._

 _The first time Sonya kisses him, John's lips feel like lead._

" _I could help, you know. I could make the pain go away," she says._

 _John refuses. He doesn't want to ever forget Gus._

 _Sonya's hair smells like amber and bergamot, and John hangs on to that when his body feels too numb to care._

 _When she decides to stay, John hugs her and tells her he can't love her the way she deserves. She says she understands, but that she's willing to wait._

 _John tells her not to._

Healing is a long process.

Before seeing Gus with the Sentinel Services, John thought he was done grieving. He hasn't felt anything like what he immediately felt for Clarice in years, and he took that as a sign that he was finally moving on.

He still dreams of feeling things properly, of light touches and caresses and Gus's body close to his, but he doesn't wake up in tears anymore.

He still dreams of Gus falling to a bullet in front of his eyes, but he doesn't wake up screaming anymore.

Sonya's lips on his don't feel like something's missing any longer.

But there are two fresh unmarked graves at the edge of the forest, and John stills needs more time to let the pain and the guilt fade away.

Against his own conscience, he hopes Clarice will wait for him to heal.

6


End file.
